Clashes between Islamic militia and groups of young people defying a ban on rallies erupted in Tehran on the anniversary of July 1999 student unrest. The violence broke out Tuesday as security forces in anti-riot gear tried to disperse betweeen 5,000 and 6,000 students and others who gathered at Tehran University campus and in neighbouring streets. Police and secret service agents as well as the Bassij militia were out in strength to enforce the ban declared Monday on all commemorations of the 1999 unrest sparked by a police raid on a student dormitory. Witnesses said several people were beaten by the militia, before the crowds started to disperse. That's life in an Islamic paradise. Why would anybody want to change that?
Tension heightened with the arrival of far-right Hezbollah vigilante groups who positioned themselves in front of the university facing the crowds. The vigilantes, headed by Hassan Bakhshi, the father of four "martyrs" of the Iran-Iraq war, chanted slogans including: "Death to those who oppose the supreme leader's authority. Death to America." Hey! It wasn't us! We were at a barbeque...
In a sign of popular support for the demonstration, entire families, parents and even their children came out of their houses to stand by and watch. "Look, Mom! They're beating Walid with a stick!"
Teenagers said they were following calls broadcast on radio by exiled Iranian opposition groups to turn out on the streets and commemorate the student unrest anniversary and express their dissatisfaction. Followup: Tonecluster has more on this one. So does Joe Katzman. Joe says there are "airplanes parked for what looks like a quick getaway at ... the Mehrabad Airport in Tehran"...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 04:59 pm ||
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Papers today dedicate editorials to the eighth anniversary of demise of President Kim Il Sung. Rodong Sinmun editorially calls for carrying on the vigorous struggle to achieve the ultimate victory of his cause under the uplifted banner of the great army-based policy. He will be immortal thanks to his great idea and leadership, virtue and feats. The tanks helped, too. And the artillery.
The last eight years are characterized by the fact that the party and people have firmly defended and glorified his feats to make them shine generation after generation. The successful accomplishment of the cause of perpetuating the memory of the leader in the DPRK is a precious fruition of the great leadership of Kim Jong Il and the history of his revolutionary activities conducted to carry out this cause is shining with brilliance as the history of the great army-based revolutionary leadership. "The Great Leader is gone, but the artillery remains! Keep on juche'ing!"
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 01:57 pm ||
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An Iranian Sunni cleric was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in the northwest of the country, the Tosse-eh paper reported. It said Mollah Seyed Mohammad Abubakri, the prayer leader in Rabt, close to the Sardasht region in the northwestern West-Azerbaijan province, was shot at several times by two unknown assailants as he was heading for the mosque for morning prayers on Sunday. According to the paper, 52 cartridges were found at the scene of the incident. Ouch. That's a lot of perforation...!
Aboubakri was taken to the Motahari hospital in the provincial capital of Orumiyeh, where he underwent surgery, the daily said, adding that he was out of danger now. Cited by Tosse-eh, the cleric said he believed the attack had a political nature because he had been threatened by militants belonging to the outlawed Iran Democratic Kurdistan Party (IDKP). Sardasht, a mostly Kurdish region, is situated in the south of the West Azerbaijan province, on the border with Turkey. A pity he wasn't one of the ruling theocrats...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 04:50 pm ||
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Maybe Iran's Shias are trying to out-deprave the Sipah-e-Sahaba Sunni-killers of Pakistan' Shias.
The wife of the lunatic Egyptian accused of killing two people at Los Angeles airport said her husband called her hours before the shooting and gave no hint he could have been planning violence. "Hesham called on July 4, it was his birthday." ... One of them, anyway...
41-year-old Hala Mohammed Sadeq Al Awadly said she can't wear black, mourn or cry because she had not yet told her sons â Omar 12, and Adam, 7 â any of what had happened. She said she was thankful that their Arabic was so poor they could not understand media reports or the conversations of the adults around them â though the older boy has been asking why his father's name keeps coming up. "Mom, aren't those Dad's shoes sticking out from under the sheet over that dead guy on TV?"
Hadayet's motive remains unknown. The FBI said it could not rule out terrorism but also was investigating the possibility it was a hate crime. Authorities also were investigating whether Hadayet was despondent over his personal or business affairs. ... and whether he was being chased by Commanches, had been drafted into the Wehrmacht and innocently thought the El Al counter was Stalingrad, or was being remotely controlled by space aliens...
She said she did not believe her husband was responsible for the shooting and was being blamed because he was Arab and Muslim. âHe is a victim of injustice,â she said three times. âIn America, they hate Islam and Arabs after Sept. 11.â "Y'see, he just walked up to the El Al counter to ask them where the toilets were and they opened fire for no reason! They shot my old man full of holes, then planted two guns and a knife on his bleeding carcass. Then those damned Jews paid a few dozen witnesses to say he started it! They killed a couple bystanders just to make it look like it was his fault, too!"
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 11:33 am ||
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Yeah, and the Mossad did the 911 dirty deeds, and Rap Brown - the bigamist - didn't murder that black cop, but the IDF did massacre babies in Jenin. Deceit must be a virtue in Islamania.
A court sentenced exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in absentia Tuesday to three years in prison for corruption. Judge Mansur Ali Khan also ordered Bhutto's non-moveable assets in Pakistan to be seized and issued warrants for her arrest if she returns to the country. Bhutto was ousted in 1996 after a corruption scandal and now lives in self-imposed exile in the United Arab Emirates and Britain. She and her husband were found guilty of corruption by Pakistan's High Court in April 1999 and sentenced to five-year jail terms, fined and disqualified from politics for seven years. Bhutto, who heads the Pakistan Peoples Party, has recently indicated she may will return to Pakistan to contest legislative elections planned for October. This is no surprise. Perv has been campaigning against corruption even harder than he's been campaigning against the fundos. Apparently he's serious, since the PPP would seem to be a natural ally against the more dangerous religious parties.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 10:19 am ||
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Three activists of Harkatul Mujahideen Al Aalmi, implicated in bomb blasts outside the US Consulate and Sheraton Hotel and in an attempt to blow up President Pervez Musharraf's motorcade, were remanded to the police custody by the administrative judge of the Anti-Terrorism Courts on Monday. When you clean house, you've got to look in all the corners to make sure you get all the rubbish...
Mohammad Imran and Mohammad Hanif, were arrested in Nazimabad on Sunday. The third accused is Shaikh Mohammad Ahmed alias Danial. Their arrest and confessional statements have established the involvement of a third vehicle which was used in the suicide attack on the US consulate. While police were of the view that the vehicle of a motor training school was the carrier, the FBI agents had suggested the involvement of a third vehicle. Imran and Hanif were chief and deputy chief of the outfit, respectively. They confessed their involvement in the suicide bombings. They also confessed that five of their accomplices, one of whom identified as Mohammad Jameel, had conspired to attack the consulate and kill the Americans. They confessed to having used the same Suzuki high-roof which they had stuffed with explosive in a bid to blow up Gen Musharraf's car near the airport on April 26. Bet they feel better after getting all that off their chests...
The two told the investigators that they had parked the Suzuki near the Falak Naz Centre on April 26 when the president was scheduled to go to the Army house from the airport. However, the remote control which they were to use to detonate the device did not work. Damn those cheap batteries!
Inspector Wasim of the Rangers had abetted the accused in their attempt and he had also been arrested and was being interrogated. He was the inside guy. They used to call him Wasim the Weasel. Nobody could figure why they didn't like him...
The DG denied taking any assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the arrests. He said that the accused's links with the Al Qaeda had not been established, but added that they did have links with some Arab nationals individually. About the blast near Sheraton Hotel, Imran told the press that he had opposed the suicide bombing and someone else had done this. "After the incident, my colleagues planned a suicide attack and they arranged a man for the task." "Hey! We need a guy for a suicide mission. You available?"
"Sure. What's it pay?"
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 02:26 pm ||
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Police have rescued five children aged between three and seven who were allegedly being smuggled to Dubai for use as camel jockeys, the FIA said on Monday. A woman with three boys and two girls, whom she claimed were her children, was stopped at the Islamabad's international airport late Sunday, FIA's Chief Airport Officer Sadar Azim said. He said the woman and the children posed as a family, but a closer look at the "mother's" passport showed that the names of the children had been included fraudulently. The use of child jockeys and jockeys weighing less than 45 kilograms has been banned in the UAE since January 1993, but the law is violated frequently. Most of the jockeys in the Emirates come from the subcontinent. "This is the first time we are seeing children of such a young age being smuggled to be used as camel riders," Mr Azim said. "The oldest boy could not be more than seven years," he said, adding that the youngest child rescued was aged three. The screams of terrified children tied to the backs of camels were thought to make the beasts run faster, Mr Azim said. Not all children survive the trauma. "What the hell? Kids are cheap. And most of them are Hindus or Shiites or some other kind of infidel."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 02:32 pm ||
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Lebanon formally requested an extension for the UN peacekeeping force patrolling the Israeli border amid fears US opposition to the new International Criminal Court will force its disbandment by the end of the month. The mandate of the 3,630-strong UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has been renewed every six months since its creation in 1978. But Washington's decision to use its UN Security Council veto to mark its hostility towards the new International Criminal Court (ICC) has threatened to terminate it and other UN peacekeeping missions around the world. Gosh. That's too bad. Wonder if anything will change?
"If the decision to extend the UNIFIL mandate is not taken, it will end at midnight on July 31. That's it," UNIFIL spokesman Timour Goksel told AFP by telephone from the mission's headquarters at Naqoura in southern Lebanon. A UN source in Beirut said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was set to recommend in a July 16 report that the Lebanon mission be extended. Recommend and be damned.
But even though the force includes no US troops, the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, had made clear that the threat of a veto hangs over all 15 current peacekeeping missions, whether or not they include Americans. The biggest worry is a US threat to cut funding for the peacekeeping operations, which this year had an aggregate budget of about 2.77 billion dollars. The United States pays for more than a quarter of the costs. Sounds like a good move to me. If we stop feeding them, they'll stop coming around.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 10:46 am ||
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Riyadh TV2 in Arabic, official television station of the Saudi Government, 5 July 2002 carries a live sermon from the holy mosque in Medina.
Shaykh Ali al-Hudhayfi delivers the sermon, which he devotes to "good manners" in Islam, saying that they mean doing what God orders and avoiding what He forbids. "Good manners," he adds, mean "piety, devotion, patience, mercy, obedience, courage, generosity, truth, forbearance, good neighborliness, modesty, endurance, tolerance, and avoiding cunning, deception, treason, and sinning." Boy, wouldn't that take all the little pleasures out of Arab life...
The imam concludes with a prayer to God to support Islam and Muslims and humble infidelity and infidels. He also calls for unity and love between Muslims. He prays: "O God, preserve Islam and Muslims in Palestine. O God, preserve Islam and Muslims in Kashmir. O God, preserve Islam and Muslims in India. O God, preserve Islam and Muslims in Chechnya. O God, preserve Islam and Muslims everywhere." Guess he was in a hurry and forgot to ask God to strike all the Jews dead where they sit...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 10:57 am ||
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In Jerusalem, Israeli police closed the Palestinian Al-Quds University president's office by order of Public Security Minister Uzi Landau. Israel suspects top university officials of operating on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and the closure order cited agreements forbidding Authority activity in Jerusalem. Sari Nusseibeh, the university president, was in Greece during Tuesday's raid. Nusseibeh, who is also the Palestinian Liberation Organization's top representative in Jerusalem, is seen by Israel as one of the more moderate Palestinian figures, and the raid on his headquarters was somewhat unexpected. Last year, police closed the Orient House compound which had been used by Faisal Husseini, Nusseibeh's predecessor in the PLO post. Looks like Nusseibeh's in a tough spot, with the PA killers wanting to dump him because he doesn't foam at the mouth, and the Israelis using him to slap the PA.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 08:06 am ||
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My question is--why do the Israeli's feel it is nedessary to act on Nusseibeh. He may not be Mohatma Gandhi, but compared to most of the PA crew, he's at least decent. The sounds like the far Israeli right taking the opportunity to run amuck. Dumb and self-destructive.
Posted by: An Atheist ||
07/09/2002 20:39 Comments ||
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I think it might be two things: First, it's a slap to the PA, "We're in charge and you're not." They're working to the letter of the Oslo agreement. Second, I think they're setting up something they can "magnanimously" back down on later, after refusing to back down on something more important.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/09/2002 21:26 Comments ||
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A Palestinian gunman opened fire on Israeli police officers just outside the walled Old City of Jerusalem on Tuesday, wounding one, and a passerby was killed in the ensuing gunbattle. The shooting came just before a second round of high-level meetings between Israeli and Palestinian officials aimed at easing tensions after 21 months of violent conflict. Naturally. That's why it came...
The Jerusalem shooting occurred when a policeman spotted a Palestinian man who looked suspicious close to Herod's Gate, which leads into the Old City, and tried to check him. The gunman drew a pistol and shot the policeman. The passerby, who police described as an Arab, was shot and killed in the fire. Earlier police said it was the gunman's fire that killed the passerby, but police then said they weren't sure since officers also fired shots, trying to stop the fleeing gunman. A man's body, covered in black plastic, was seen under a tree. Police erected road barricades, vacated the area and launched a search for the gunman, and a suspect was arrested about an hour later. This guy will probably turn out to be Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Every time there's a move toward lessening tensions they have to kill somebody.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 08:06 am ||
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Palestinian sources say a special unit of the Israeli army has killed a leading member of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank. They say Moammar Daraghmah was perforated early Tuesday when his car was ambushed in Yamun village, just west of Jenin.
Followup:
Daraghmah bled to death before he made it to the hospital, Islamic Jihad said. Daraghmeh was armed and on a mission against Israeli targets when he set off from Yamoun village in the West Bank. Daraghmeh, 30, was brought to a hospital in Jenin but he had already bled to death, said Haitham Abu Moudis, a nurse from the Palestinian Red Crescent. The army said it was investigating the shooting. Too bad for Moamar, but nobody ever liked him anyway. It's kinda hard to bitch and moan about getting ambushed when your guy was "armed and on a mission against Israeli targets," isn't it? Unless you're a Paleostinian or you've been dropped on your head...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 08:06 am ||
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From Palestinian Media Watch...
[Features] frames from an hour-long Palestinian Authority TV film broadcast today, July 4th. The clip, depicting the hardships of Jenin, includes a child and an elder pushing away food brought by AID workers. Although the box does not have the full lettering - "USAID" [United States Agency for International Developement] - the PA message is explicit, stated by one of the residents: "Enough of these nice lies, we're sick of fraud and deceit. Tell the Deceiver: the people will die of hunger... will not live in humiliation!"
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 11:08 am ||
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In office only two months, France's new foreign minister Dominique de Villepin has returned from his second trip to the Middle East - which last week took him to Lebanon, Syria and Jordan - and says that if there's one message he's conveyed to his hosts , it's that France once again wants to play a key role in the region... Which is why during his trip to Ramallah two weeks ago, the French foreign minister was charged with explaining to President Yasser Arafat that it would be best for him to step down and make way for younger blood... Given the sensitivity of the request being made of Mr Arafat, and although the Palestinian President has indicated he would be running for re-election nevertheless - "if Chirac can do so, then why can't I?," he was heard to quip to a journalist - French diplomats are confident that between now and January they'll be able to prevail upon him to gracefully step down. Now that's interesting. Just a day or two ago they were backing Yasser. Wonder what's changed?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 06:04 pm ||
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A Philippine man police say provided the explosives for a plan to attack U.S. military personnel and naval vessels as well as the British High Commission, the Israeli Embassy and the Australian High Commission in Singapore, has been arrested. Officials said Hussain Ramos, 35, was helping members of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Islamic extremist group authorities say is linked to al-Qaida. He was arrested Monday in Marawi, in the southern Philippines. Ramos was implicated by Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian who told police he helped plan a series of almost simultaneous bombings that killed 22 people in Manila in 2000. He has been in custody since January. It's wonderful when these guys sing. The tunes lead to others, and pretty soon you've got a chorus.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 08:06 am ||
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Just one day after a fire killed 52 people at a disco in South Sumatra, a disco in Riau province was rocked by a series of explosions. State news agency Antara reported that a group of unidentified men hurled âhomemade explosive devicesâ into the Orion discotheque in the Riau capital of Pekanbaru at about 9pm Monday. It was not clear whether the attackers used Molotov cocktails, fireworks or other devices. As the explosions started, patrons and staff fled from the four-story building, which is part of the Senapelan shopping center. The rest of the center was also soon deserted. Witnesses said they saw eight people enter the disco through an emergency exit shortly before the blasts. Local police were yet to arrest any of the attackers. There were no reports of any injuries. It could have been crooks, or it could have been pious men with turbans making sure no one has any fun...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 08:16 am ||
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Police suspect an Islamic group was involved in the bombing of a train in southern Thailand, suggesting for the first time a link between Muslim gunniessnuffies activists and a rash of violence in the area. Oh, wotta surprise! That's never happened before...
The small bomb, left in a box on the train, exploded Monday when the train was at Yala station. Two security guards who were inspecting the suspicious package were wounded when it blew up. Muslims are a majority in the south of Thailand, but make up just 4 percent of the country's 62 million people, who are predominantly Buddhists. They want their own autonomous territory because they can't get along with anyone else...
Police chief Gen. Sant Sarutanond said his forces had expected ``some retaliation'' following the arrests on Sunday of an Islamic leader, Adoon Hayeed Halor, who belonged to a former separatist group, the Pattani United Liberation Organization. That's because Islamists always retaliate whenever they can't have their way...
Adoon's comrades have banded together as the Islam Pattani Mujahedeen - a little-known group that has not conducted any overt separatist campaign, or claimed responsibility for any of the recent violence in Thailand's Muslim-dominated south. Sant's comments are the government's first hint that Islamic militants may be involved in the violence, including drive-by shootings that have left 10 policemen and two civilians dead. Until now, authorities have blamed the attacks on bandits and mercenaries hired by gangsters to settle business disputes. We've noticed over the past nine months that the difference between Heroic Mujaheddin and banditti often boils down to how much money they have in their pockets — if that...
Sant said the police are keeping an eye on the Islam Pattani Mujahedeen members. Much of the recent violence has occurred in the Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces, about 670 miles south of Bangkok along the border with Malaysia, which has a Muslim majority. The Pattani United Liberation Organization has been defunct since it was disbanded following a general amnesty in 1984. At its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, it commanded more than 20,000 armed guerrillas in its fight for a separate Muslim homeland. Some rebels still loyal to the movement are believed to have turned to banditry, operating extortion rackets, harassing businessmen and launching sporadic attacks against police. They're at home in such pursuits...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 10:12 am ||
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The author of a book criticizing Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant has halted plans to print more copies on the advice of several Islamic groups. He doesn't want his car to explode...
Montasser el-Zayat told The Associated Press on Monday that members of the outlawed Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood who had read his book - "Ayman al-Zawahri - As I knew him" - contacted him in recent months and suggested that he cancel the book's third printing. Waking up in bed with the horse's head helped change his mind...
"People told me to take into consideration al-Zawahri's current circumstances, which make him unable to respond (to claims in the book)," said el-Zayat, also a lawyer who has defended Islamic militants in Egyptian court trials since 1987. You mean still commanding the remnants of an army of goons willing to call on you for tea and explode?
El-Zayat's book blames Zawahri's policies for what he calls "the biggest crisis that all Islamic groups, regardless of their names, are suffering from," namely, the fallout from Sept. 11. Meaning Islamists are getting their underwear kicked vigorously world-wide. What a happy feeling!
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/09/2002 08:06 am ||
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So the Islamists don't believe in freedom of expression. So how do they explain why azzam.com and Muslim Students Association webspewer crybabies are always moping about losing their ISPs?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
